Allamunnic language
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| Allamunnic | |
|---|---|
| Native to | North Ottonia, South Ottonia, Sudmark |
Native speakers | approx. 110,000,000 (2014) |
| Latin | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 | – |
| Glottolog | None |
Allamunnic is a language spoken in northwest Belisaria in the nations of Ottonia and its cultural footprint. It is the most-widely spoken language in North Ottonia, South Ottonia, and Sudmark and acts as a bridge language and administrative language in all three countries. There are also significant Allamunnic speech communities in Erishland, Ghant, Arthurista, and Yisrael. It is estimated to be spoken as a first or native language by approximately 100 million people, most of them in Ottonia and Draakur. Abroad, it is significantly less-commonly taught and spoken than its Arthuristan mainline Anglic counterpart.
Classification
While Allamunnic is generally classified as a distinct language, it is closely related to Anglic, which is spoken in Arthurista, and it is a matter of some controversy in the linguistic academic community as to whether Anglic and Allamunnic are indeed distinct languages or if they form a larger dialectic continuum within a broader, single Anglic language.
The Allamunnic peoples that gave the language its name are believed by some to have been the original speech community that gave rise to Anglic as a whole, spreading it in their migrations westward from Central Belisaria, a mix of West and North Germanic tribes operating within a tribal federation. The group that gave rise to modern Allamunnic settled in modern Ottonia, where they settled amongst existing Eonese and Corvaik speech communities, as well as coming into less-frequent, but still-significant contact with Nordish peoples.
The language of Kamryk and its offshoot, Umbiaans (spoken in Wazheganon) are considered to be closely related, and possibly off-shoot language of Allamunnic.
History
Allamunnic in a form that would be recognizable as a distinct language to modern observers is first attested to in the early middle ages, roughly around the time of the conquests of Otto the Invincible. It is considered to have arrived with the invasion of the Allamunnic tribal federation in the 5th century of the Common Era, in a form that is generally referred to as Old Anglo-Allamunnic. This stage of development still displayed grammatical case endings and a relatively fluid word order that would disappear from the language over the ensuing centuries.
It is believed that the speech communities that would go on to establish Anglic and Allamunnic split sometime in the 6th century of the Common Era, with the speech community that would go on to speak Anglic establishing itself in modern Arthurista while the eventual Allamunnic-speaking population settled for good in what is now Ottonia.
By the 13th century, what is now called Middle Allamunnic was spoken widely alongside the languages that were even then influencing its development. By this time case endings had been dropped entirely from the language, rendering it word-order dependent.
Phonology
Grammar
Persistance of Informal Second-Person Case
A feature which distinguishes Allamunnic from the Arthuristan variety of Anglic is the retention of the T-V distinction, which has been rendered archaic in Arthuristan Anglic. In Allamunnic, you is used for formal second-person address, while tu or du are used to address familiar second-person subjects (with the former being more common in the Eonese-influenced west of the area, and the latter being more common in the more Nordish-influenced east and far north). Additionally, Allamunnic in its modern form also retains two standard second-person plural pronouns, the older "ye" (from which "you" was derived, likely at some point in the 16th or 17th century), and the more recent (dating to the 18th or 19th century) and less-formal "yokes" (a contraction of "ye folks"). In general, "ye" serves as the plural of "you" (i.e. in more formal contexts) while "yokes" serves as the plural of "tu/du".
Within North and South Ottonia, the informal second-person pronouns ("tu/du" and "yokes") are generally reserved for the speaker's friends, family, and friendly acquaintances, while the formal second-person pronouns ("you" and "ye") tend to be used for anyone else. The demarcation for who it is and is not appropriate to use informal second-person with is typically sharper within North Ottonian speech commmunities, with informal second-person generally being reserved for more intimate relations (close friends, family, and intimate partners) whereas those boundaries are less-well defined in most South Ottonian speech communities.
Vocabulary & Pragmatics
Allamunnic borrows heavily from Eonese, Covaik, and Skraeli, Nordish, and less-heavily from Kamryker and Audonian, for its vocabulary to supplement its own indigenous vocabulary. It is worth note that while Anglic derives most of its Latin loaned vocabulary via Latin directly or Audonian, similar vocabulary reached Allamunnic through contact with Eonese and, to a much lesser extent, Audonian.
Notably, the pragmatics of certain words common to both Allamunnic and Anglic vary significantly between the languages.